The Town of Kap’s insurance bill has come in and it has councillors and administrator Guylain Baril seeing red. The town will pay nearly $700,000 for insurance which is a 75 per cent increase over what was paid just five years ago. Baril says it’s upsetting because the town hasn’t had an incident since 2017.
“The frustrating point is that the money is not being used for incidents and it keeps going up,” he said. “I feel like the performance that we’ve had in terms of managing risk and being an insurance user is not reflected in the cost that we pay.”
Baril says the rise in insurance rates isn’t something Kapuskasing isn’t facing alone and other towns in the area are in the same boat. Council has asked town staff to review options to reduce costs. He mentions one way could be de-insuring some of the vehicles and buildings.
“So there maybe assets that we would like to take the collision insurance off of,” he said. “For example on vehicles – the car at the civic centre is a pretty old car you know if it was to be damaged, I don’t think we would be collecting insurance. In fact, I don’t think we would be collecting insurance on most damages on equipment and vehicles.”
Baril says another option could be joining forces with other communities on the highway 11 corridor on a group policy.
